A Good Name For A Ship

Allison Graves (editor of Boat Shoes) reads her work from the deck of The Wandering Pavilion.

The Wandering Pavilion wishes it could sail. It is designed to travel. Like a ship, it has sturdy beams, a wooden deck, and a fondness for taut lines and triangles. Its fabric walls embrace the wind like mainsails. Today, docked in the parking lot outside Eastern Edge, it is even draped with signal flags. The flags say You should keep closer to me. The Pavilion gazes out over the water and hopes for a response from the ocean. It regrets the harbour fence.

The Wandering Pavilion wants the Atlantic, but it will settle for shoes. Waves of shoes wash over it, leaving scuffs and scratches. Its deck could use a good swab. Today it is cloudy and the Pavilion hopes for a shower, because rain is the closest it gets to ocean, and because when it rains people take cover under its canopy. The Pavilion likes feeling useful, keeping busy. It has made itself a stage, a shelter, a stall, a cinema. Today, as part of Hold Fast, it is a soapbox and a soundbooth. Someone deejays and someone paints faces. People take turns speaking, and then an artist performs, knotting ropes around themselves and dangling from a hook. The Pavilion beams.

With its two halves, the Wandering Pavilion is perhaps more like a flotilla than a ship, adopting different formations depending on its mission. And it is fleeting in other ways, rarely lingering in one place. It might not sail, but it is easily dismantled and shipped across the city. It’s especially drawn to parks and parking lots, spaces that people pass through, spaces where it might find passengers. Spaces that it can shape into places, into destinations. What the Pavilion does best is make room: for conversations, for collaborations, for interactions that wouldn’t otherwise occur. It is a vessel that brings people together. What is wants most is for you to come aboard.